[ad. L. flexiōn-em, n. of action f. flectĕre (ppl. stem flex-) to bend. Cf. Fr. flexion, Sp. flexion, It. flessione. The etymological spelling flexion is the original in Eng.; flection (first in 18th c.) is due to the influence of such words as affection, direction, etc.]
1. The action of bending, curvature; bent condition; an instance of this.
1656. Hobbes, Six Less., Wks. 1845, VII. 260. The angle of contact is quantity, namely, that it is the quantity of that crookedness or flexion, by which a straight line is bent into an arch of a circle equal to it.
1659. Pearson, Creed, vi. 562. Thus to sit doth not signifie any peculiar inclination or flexion, any determinate location or position of the body, but to be in heaven with permanence of habitation, happinesse of condition, regall and judiciary power.
1796. Brougham, in Phil. Trans., LXXXVI. 227. Flexion, or the bending of the rays [of light] in their passage by bodies.
1807. J. Robinson, Archæol. Græca, III. xx. 338. The great art in this contest consisted in eluding the stroke of the adversary by a flexion of the body.
1882. Vines, Sachs’ Bot., 602. The flexions again of the stem and leaf-stalk produced by the wind cause compressions and dilatations of the gases which fill the cavities, and these again give rise to currents of gas in the interior.
attrib. 1860. Bigelow (title), On the Mechanism of Dislocation and Fracture of the Hip. With the Reduction of the Dislocation by the Flexion Method.
b. esp. The bending of a limb or joint by the action of the flexor muscles. Cf. EXTENSION 2.
1615. Crooke, Body of Man, 989. By this articulation both flexion and extention is made.
1644. Bulwer, Chiron., 121. Certain delicate flexions, and light sounding percussions of the Fingers, is an action condemned in the Hand of an Oratour.
1799. Med. Jrnl., II. 166. Vesalius investigated the use of the muscle of the poples more minutely, and maintained it did not produce a perceptible flexion of the tibia.
1835–6. R. B. Todd, The Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology, I. 255–6. When two segments of a limb, placed in a direct line or nearly so, can be brought to form an angle with each other, the motion is that of flexion, the restoration to the direct line is extension.
1881. St. George Jackson Mivart, The Cat, 117. This ligament aids powerfully in preventing the flexion of the knee forwards, there being in the leg no process like the olecranon of the ulna to prohibit (by the mere shape of the leg-bones themselves), a bending of the joint in the wrong direction.
c. A kneeling (in prayer), genuflexion. rare.
1862. Lond. Rev., 30 Aug., 187/1. Next followed two prayer flections at the Tomb of Abraham, after which we drank of the water of Zamzam, said to be the same which quenched the thirst of Hagar’s exhausted son.
† d. A turning of the eye in any direction. Obs.
1626. Bacon, Sylva, § 719. Pity causeth sometimes Tears, and a Flexion or Cast of the Eye aside.
† 2. Alteration, change, modification. Obs.
1603. Holland, Plutarch’s Mor., 1251. In every one of them Sacadas made a certeine flexion or tune, called Strophe.
1644. Bulwer, Chiron., 123. Oratours, when they related the verses of anclent Poets, unlesse perchance of the more effeminate of them, (who hunted also after delicate flexions of words).
1655. Fuller, The Church-History of Britain, III. v. § 35. Thus was it not altogether the Flexibility of King Henry, but partly the Flexion of his Condition, (I mean, the altering of his occasions) which made him sometimes withstand, and otherwhiles comply with the Popes extortion.
b. A modification of the sound or tone of the voice in singing or speaking; inflexion.
1758. Johnson, Idler, No. 25, 7 Oct., ¶ 5. Variation of gesture, and flexion of voice, are to be obtained only by experience.
1846. Grote, Greece, I. xxi. (1862), I. 530. For whom was a written Iliad necessary? Not for the rhapsodes; for with them it was not only planted in the memory, but also interwoven with the feelings, and conceived in conjunction with all those flexions and intonations of voice, pauses and other oral artifices, which were required for emphatic delivery, and which the naked manuscript could never reproduce.
3. concr. The bent part of anything; a bend, curve. Also, a joint.
1607. Topsell, Four-f. Beasts, 204. Being vnable to rise againe because of the short Nerues and no flexions in his Legs, there he lyeth till the Watch man come and cut off his head.
1626. Bacon, Sylva, § 222. Of a Sinuous Pipe, that may haue some foure Flexions, Triall would be made.
1726. Leoni, trans. Alberti’s Archit., III. 20/1. There are like flexions in the boughs of trees.
1803. Med. Jrnl., X. 61. He put a blister near the trochanter, and another below the flexion on the anterior part of the thigh, keeping the sores open by means of Galvanism.
1867. Howells, Ital. Journ., 56. They wander at will around the bases of the gloomy old stone palaces, and seem to have a vagabond fondness for creeping down to the port, and losing themselves there in a certain cavernous arcade which curves round the water with the flection of the shore, and makes itself a twilight at noonday.
4. Gram. Modification of the form of a word; esp. the change of ending in conjugation, declension, etc.; inflexion. Also, the modified form or ending of a word.
1605. Camden, Rem. (1657), 39. Neither are we loden with those declensions, flexions, and variations, which are incident to many other tongues, but a few articles governe all our verbes and Nownes.
1669. Gale, Crt. Gentiles, I. I. xi. 61. Those very words which agree with the radical Leters of the Hebrews, differ somewhat in the sound of the vowels and flexion.
1720. De Foe, Duncan Campbell (1841), 37. You may teach him the flexion or conjugation of the verb.
1773. Ld. Monboddo, Lang., I. III. xiv. 672. It is not easy, merely by a comparison of the languages, to say, whether the worst of the two be the corruption of the other, or the original language out of which it is formed and improved by the addition of proper terminations and flections.
1817. Coleridge, Biog. Lit., 175. The common grammatic flexions of some tribe or province, had been accidentally appropriated to poetry by the general admiration of certain master intellects, the first established lights of inspiration, to whom that dialect happened to be native.
1875. Whitney, Life Lang., xii. 241. It [Japanese] is by no means monosyllabic, but rather an agglutinative dialect of extremely simple structure, with hardly an established distinction between noun and verb, with no determinate flexion.
5. Math. = FLEXURE 6.
1704. Hayes, Treat. Fluxions, VI. 153, heading. The Use of Fluxions in Investigating the Points of contrary Flexion and Retrogression of Curves.
1857. J. P. Nichol, Cycl. Phys. Sc., s.v. The mathematical theory of Flexion starts from the basis or datum of this Line of No-disturbance.
